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10 Self-Publishing Tips for Successful Speakers

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by Karen Saunders (used with permission)

Editor’s Note: My colleague for the past 25 years, Karen Saunders offers nonfiction book-publishing services for authors. Many are professional speakers from around the world. She shares these 10 tips for anyone seeking advice about self-publishing. – Barbara McNichol

As a speaker you have an important message to deliver, and your goal is to reach as many people as possible. One way to do this is by leveraging your content into a self-published book. A book will give you credibility, open doors to new speaking opportunities, and provide another revenue stream—that is, if your book is every bit as professional as you are. As a busy speaker, I know you will appreciate these 10 self-publishing tips.

After 25 years in the business of designing book covers and interiors and helping speakers publish their books, I know self-published books can outshine those produced by major publishing houses. Here’s how savvy self-publishers produce first-class books, the kind of books that attract readers.

The following are my list of self-publishing tips:

  1. A custom book cover design that captures the essence of its content and connects with your target market. A study by The Wall Street Journal revealed bookstore browsers spend an average of 8 seconds glancing at the front cover and 15 seconds reviewing the back cover. People DO judge a book by its cover!
  2. A compelling book title and descriptive, concise subtitle. If you’re having trouble crafting a title, organize a brainstorming session or focus group. Your title and graphics must work together to persuade the book browser to pick it up. Together they must elicit an emotional response and describe the features and advantages of your book.
  3. Endorsements and testimonials from VIPs on the front and/or back cover. Make the time needed to ask well-respected peers in your industry to review your book and to follow up with them.
  4. Editing by a professional book editor. It is imperative to research and select an editor who is experienced in your genre.
  5. A pleasing, organized, appropriate interior. Use an easy-to-read font and format and quality, opaque paper stock. Request printed books and paper samples from the manufacturer before selecting your paper stock.
  6. Concise, targeted copy on the back cover. The content on the back cover is prime real estate to promote your book to your target market. Compose a pithy sales header at the top, follow with benefit-laden bullet points, and a call to action at the bottom. The back cover copy needs to answer the book buyer’s question, “What’s in it for me?”
  7. Proofreading by a professional proofreader. Do NOT skip this important step. Typographic and grammatical errors will scream amateur and turn off buyers.
  8. The right price, trim size, and specifications for the type of book. Go to the bookstore and browse in your category to research other competitive books. You want to keep your price in line with other books of a similar nature. Notice if similar books are hardcover or softcover, and check their size (e.g., 6×9).
  9. A copyright page with all the necessary content. These items may include all of the following: ISBN number, LCCN (Library of Congress Control Number) number, PCIP (Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication) block, disclaimer and protection verbiage, copyright date, credits to contributors, publishing company information, and where the book was printed.
  10. Design elements are coordinated with your brand. Your speaker platform provides the foundation for your brand. Your book design and content should reinforce and support it. Although your picture is an integral part of your brand, consider carefully before putting your photo on the front cover. Of course, if you are already famous there is no question, but inserting your picture will not make you famous. If however, you are branding yourself as an expert to a specific, targeted niche market, then it is a wise strategy.

Remember, book design is a form of packaging, and professional packaging attracts buyers to products. That’s why successful organizations spend millions researching and developing the best product packaging possible. Make your book the best in its class! Utilize these 10 self-publishing tips in your next book.

Do you have a question for Karen? Ask it here!

You can reach at Karen Saunders at karen@karensaundersassoc.com and visit her website at www.karensaundersassoc.com.

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Top 10 Self-Publishing Bloopers

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by Karen Saunders

Editor’s Note: My colleague Karen Saunders shares these 10 publishing “bloopers” to avoid if you’re self-publishing your book. Of special interest is #1.

Karen Saunders

10 Self-Publishing Bloopers

  1. The number one mistake is not having your book professionally edited. There are different levels of editing: content editing, copy editing, and proofreading. In my September 2014 blog post I describe in detail these three types of editing services.
  2. Missing the bar code. If you don’t have a bar code on the back cover of your book, you won’t be able to sell your book in bookstores or on Amazon.
  3. Bad cover design. Your cover sells your book. Hire a professional designer to create a stunning, attention-grabbing cover.
  4. Bad interior layout. Your book interior needs to be clean, organized, easy to read and meet standard formatting guidelines. One example of poor layout is the book titled A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. This controversial autobiography was revealed by Oprah to have fabricated content, and the interior layout is missing indents! It is extremely difficult to see where one paragraph ends and another begins.
  5. Blank back cover. Your back cover is valuable real estate to sell your book to prospective buyers. Make use of your back cover to include a snappy headline, bulleted benefit points, testimonials, summary, short biography, and a call to action.
  6. Misleading cover design and title. Make sure your title, subtitle, and cover graphics accurately portray and support the interior content.
  7. No copyright page. This is the most important page in your book. In my November 2012 blog post I include a list of necessary items for this page.
  8. Missing the ISBN number and/or LCCN number. You must have an ISBN number to sell your book anywhere other than your own website. Buy a block of 10 from Bowker.com. Use the second number in the list for the ebook version of your book. If you want to sell your book to libraries, you must have an LCCN number. Get one free from the Library of Congress.
  9. Using MS Word to lay out your book. This application is not a good choice for book interior page layout. It does not have the functionality and tools required to create a professional-quality layout. Use Adobe InDesign or Quark Xpress.
  10. Not having a well-thought-out marketing plan in place before you publish your book. How and where will sell your book? You may need coaching to optimize social media tools for marketing your book. Learn about publishing support sites where you can drive interest in your book, gather pre-sales, and raise funds.

Karen Saunders is the owner of MacGraphics Services, a unique graphic design firm for today’s entrepreneur. Karen Saunders and her team of award-winning designers help authors and small business owners design their books, convert their books into ebooks, build their brand, launch their website and market their business. Visit her website to download a free Book Media Checklist and a free eCourse on How to Create a Best-selling Book Design from the Inside Out at www.MacGraphics.net. You can also contact her at 888-796-7300, or Karen@macgraphics.net.

How to Format Your Nonfiction Manuscript

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by Karen Saunders, www.MacGraphics.net

Do you know how to prepare your manuscript for your editor, proofreader, and especially your book designer?

As a book designer, I strongly urge self-publishers to hire a professional editor and proofreader prior to delivering a manuscript to our designer for layout.

Nevertheless, our team sometimes receives partial manuscripts and manuscripts that have not been proofread or formatted properly for proofreading or design. As a result, it takes more time (and cost the client money) for us to get the manuscript in the proper format before we can begin to proofread or lay it out.

To save time and money, I’ve prepared the following checklist:

  • Put the whole manuscript, including all front matter and back matter in chronological order in one MS Word document
  • Do not include your front and back cover copy in this document. Instead, create another MS Word document for the front cover, back cover, and inside flaps (if you have them)
  • Do NOT give us a PDF document of your manuscript, because we will have to convert it back into a MS Word document, and in doing so, it will lose formatting and introduce new errors. The conversion process is not precise and technical errors are common.
  • Use 12 point Times New Roman with double line spacing
  • Use left alignment
  • The first line in the first paragraph in each chapter, after a heading, or after each subheading should NOT be indented.
  • But please DO indent the first line of all remaining paragraphs, Please use the tab key, not the space bar.
  • Use ONE space after all sentences (not two spaces)
  • Do NOT insert an additional space between paragraphs, after headings or subheadings
  • Bold and italicize words you want highlighted in those styles
  • Use bold, initial caps for chapter titles, heads, and subheads, left aligned in 12 point Times New Roman. Do NOT use ALL CAPS. (The designer will make an appropriate change in the format style in the page layout document). If your manuscript has multiple levels of headings and subheadings, please create an outline with the designations: I, II, III, A, B, C, 1, 2, 3, a, b, c, etc., to designate each topic’s level in the hierarchy.
  • Eliminate all running heads, headers, and footers (text on the top and bottom of the page, above and below the main content)
  • You may have page numbers, but be aware these will change on the layout document
  • Bullet points and numbered lists should be formatted with hanging indents and a left margin of 0 .5 inches.
  • Indicate sidebars, call outs and boxed text with a dashed or dotted line prior to and after the text. Type the appropriate descriptive words (i.e.: SIDEBAR:, CALL OUT:, BOXED TEXT) in a separate paragraph prior to the text to indicate a change in formatting. Use 12 point Times New Roman. (The designer will make an appropriate change in the format style in the page layout document).
  • Every place where you want a photo, graphic, or illustration inserted should have a separate paragraph with the words formatted like the example shown below followed by the corresponding caption (if you have one). Use the exact filename for the image in the instructions so we can locate the image file by its name.
    << “Insert Photo (or graphic, illustration) 26.jpg here >> Caption follows . . .
  • Do NOT insert your photos, graphics, or illustrations into the MS Word document. Instead, include all the high-resolution files of the photos, graphics and illustrations in one of three folders, titled Photos, Graphics, or Illustrations. The designer will reference the filename you used in the manuscript to retrieve the proper file from the folder and insert it into the layout.
  • If you want to designate a mandatory page break, please add a new paragraph with the words “Insert a Page Break Here”
  • Be sure to include a table of contents page. Do not include page numbers on the table of contents because the page numbers will be different in the book layout.
  • Be sure to include the copyright page with the following information:
    • Your book title and subtitle at the top of the page
    • You may include your publishing company logo (this is NOT your printer)
    • Copyright © 2012 (or whatever the current year is at the time of publication), by your company name or your name depending on who the copyright owner is for your work. All rights reserved.
    • No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of your company name here.
    • Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be submitted to the publisher at your company name and contact information here.
    • Cover credit
    • Book design credit
    • Editor credit
    • Author’s name, website, contact information
    • Printed in the United States of America (or wherever it was printed)
    • First Printing: month and year
    • ISBN-13 number
    • LCCN number
    • There is also often a disclaimer that the material in the book cannot substitute for professional advice; further, the author is not liable if the reader relied on the material and was financially damaged in some way, and if it is a biography, a statement about the recollection of stories shared are recalled to the best of the author’s knowledge, etc.

Shown below is the proper order of the front matter, according to the Chicago Manual of Style. You do not need ALL of these items, but whatever you do have needs to be in this order.

  • Book half title
  • Frontispiece or blank page
  • Title page
  • Copyright page
  • Dedication
  • Epigraph
  • Contents
  • List of Illustrations
  • List of Tables
  • Foreword (Notice how this word is spelled)
  • Preface
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • Text (Main body of manuscript)

Here is the proper order of the back matter, according to the Chicago Manual of Style: You do not need to have any of these items, but if you do, this is the proper order.

  • Acknowledgments (if not in front matter)
  • Appendix
  • Notes
  • Glossary
  • Bibliography or References
  • List of Contributors
  • Illustration credits if not in caption or elsewhere
  • Index
  • About the Author
  • Book Order Page

——————————

Karen Saunders is the owner of MacGraphics Services, a unique graphic design firm for today’s entrepreneur. Karen Saunders and her team of award winning designers help authors and small business owners design their books, build their brand, launch their website and market their business. Visit her website to download a free Book Media Checklist and afree eCourse on How to Create a Best-selling Book Design from the Inside Out www.MacGraphics.net You can also contact her at 888-796-7300, or Karen@macgraphics.net.

Converting Print to eBook – Lessons Learned

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by Karen Saunders, MacGraphics Services (used with permission)

As an author and independent publisher, I’m always looking for ways to leverage my work. Turning my intellectual property into various products is a pretty obvious solution. The emerging popularity of Kindle, iPads, and Nooks convinced me now was the time to convert my printed book, Turn Eye Appeal into Buy Appeal into an ebook.

 Many Ways to Sell and Distribute eBooks

I discovered there are several routes I could take to sell and distribute my ebooks, depending on how much time and effort I wanted to put into the distribution process. I initially learned that I could use a third-party aggregator to get my books listed on popular ebook sales sites such as Amazon.com’s Kindle department, Apple iBookstore, and Barnes & Noble’s Nook’s department.

All About Aggregators

Third-party aggregators (such as Smashwords, BiblioCore, LuLu, Book Baby, LibreDigital, DarkFire, InGrooves, and many more) help self-publishers convert their books into ebooks and set up distribution with the popular retailers I’ve already mentioned. But the aggregators also take a cut (sometimes a significant cut) of each sale. Some aggregators also use contracts that are digital rights management (DRM)-free. DRM protects the copyrights of electronic media. DRM as applied to ebooks is a proprietary file encryption that helps publishers limit the illegal sale of copyrighted books. This is very important to me, so it was another reason not to use aggregators.

 Direct Portals to Retail Sites

Next, I discovered there are direct portals to each of these retail sites. I set up my own publisher’s account with Apple, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Google. This allowed me to keep a bigger portion of my sales by selecting a discount rate of my choice (the discount rate is an amount I agree to give to the retailer to sell my book) and keep the middleman (aggregator) out of it.

I filled out an application and contract online with each of the retailers and provided information on how they could make payments to my bank account, as well as metadata (information about the book such as copyright date, book categories, ISBN number, keywords, etc). Then I had to convert my book to the proper format they requested, and upload the ebook file and cover image.

Here is a chart on the most popular ebook formats:

Retailer/Location     eReader Device/App       File Format      Publisher’s Connection

Amazon                      Kindle                                Mobi                 Digital Text Platform          

Apple                         iPad                                   ePub                  iTunes Connect

Barnes & Noble          Sony Nook                        ePub                  PubIt

Libraries                     Adobe Digital Editions        ePub                  Local Libraries

Many ways to convert a book into an ebook

My printed book was originally formatted in Adobe InDesign, and I also had an identical version available in a PDF file format. (I can easily output an identical version of my printed book in a PDF file through Adobe InDesign or Distiller.) But these sites didn’t want a PDF file. They wanted Mobi or ePub format.

My book was two columns and had over 200 illustrations and graphics throughout the interior, so it was a fairly complicated layout. I discovered that complex interior formats don’t easily translate into ebook pages.

Although InDesign has a feature that allows me to convert a document into epub, and I’ve seen websites (including Amazon’s) that claim it is easy and inexpensive to translate a file, they just didn’t result in a clean format.

First of all, eBook readers are built to support one long continuous column, so I had to make some major adjustments to my 2-column layout. A proper layout was particularly important to me since my book was about design, layout and marketing! The websites and automated conversion software do convert very simple word documents with pretty good results though.

So I sought the experts in this area; individuals and companies who specialize in ebook conversion services. Because my book had such a complex layout, the price was quite high. I also got a price from a company overseas. I quickly learned that you get what you pay for. As in any service field, the price of the service usually matches the quality you receive.

Overseas Service

I paid a very low price for the ebook conversion service, but I had to spend many hours proofing layout and formatting errors and checking all the links. The titles, subtitles, lists, body copy, and graphics were not formatted in a consistent manner or in a standard book format. Indents and justified formatting were applied to titles and subtitles when they shouldn’t have been. Links were not active or were going to the wrong places, headline text was clipped off, graphics were missing or in the wrong places, and on and on. Eventually after several months of working with the contractor on both the mobi and epub versions of my ebooks, the files were formatted properly and I was able to upload them to the retail sites.

Some things to watch out for:

  • Make sure you have an active table of contents with live links that go to the correct sections in your book interior
  • Make sure your epub document passes the epub validation test (a free test is available at www.threepress.org)
  • Be sure your ebook has its own ISBN number (you can buy a block of 10 ISBN numbers from www.Bowker.com). Amazon will assign its own unique identifier to your book, but Apple requires an ISBN number.
  • Be sure to have an eye-catching cover design with a title that you can read clearly when it is reduced to postage-stamp size.
  • Reformat your front cover to 600 pixels wide by 800 pixels tall at 300 DPI so it maximizes the entire screen on most eReader devices.
  • Check your files on all the ebook software readers and devices. If you don’t own a Kindle, Nook, or iPad, find a friend who does. Download Adobe Digital Editions and Kindle for Mac/PC. Look at your book on each one and make sure everything looks and works properly.
  • Put your table of contents first, even before your copyright page.
  • Be careful about your decision on digital rights management and how you answer this question on contracts.
  • Do the numbers on how to price your book according to the discount rate you pay the distributor/retailer. It sometimes works best to lower your price to get a higher profit margin. For example, Amazon and Apple will pay up to 70% royalty on a book if it is priced between $2.99 and $9.99. They only pay 35% if the book is priced at $10.00 or more!

New Technology and the Lack of Established Standards

As with any new technology, standards need to be established, and ebooks are no exception. There is a lot of debate among developers and publishers regarding a number of issues including whether every ebook format needs a separate ISBN number, the standard order of pages, coding that provides consistent results on every version of each device and software, consistent image size and resolution requirements for cover and interior graphics, formatting that resembles books, navigation, whether the devices supports color imagery, etc. This is where a lot of the labor was spent; trying to make my book look the best on every eReader device out there.

I hope this helps you find your path from printed book to ebook with fewer trials and tribulations.

Karen Saunders and her team of award winning designers help authors and small business owners design their books, build their brand, launch their website and market their business. She now offers ebook conversion services. Visit her website to download a free Book Media Checklist and a free eCourse on How to Create a Best-selling Book Design from the Inside Out www.MacGraphics.net

Note: Barbara McNichol is editor of Karen’s book Turn Eye Appeal into Buy Appeal.

(c) 2011 Karen Saunders

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